Many of us worry about the United States becoming a socialist country. A little known accident of history, the untimely death of Wendell Willkie, scotched a plan to do just that. After the 1940 presidential election between a liberal Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a liberal Republican, Wendell Willkie, FDR, frustrated, as he saw it, by the southern conservative Democrats, began talks with Willkie with the intent of forming a new Liberal party, uniting the liberal wings of the Democrat and Republican parties, leaving the rest to shift for themselves. Had it happened, the result would likely have been a three party system, with a rump conservative southern Democrat party, a rump conservative Midwest Republican party, and a dominant Liberal party. It never happened because WWII intervened, Willkie died, and less than two years after that FDR died. So it never happened, but it could have, with disastrous consequences for the US. As late as 1968 George Wallace could accurately say, of our two dominant parties, that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them. Had FDR and Willkie succeeded, there would most assuredly have been a great deal of difference between them. The United States would have had political parties on the British model, and our politics and country would have been completely different, dominated as it would be by a far left political party. That is where we now are, with the Democratic party captured by the far left, and leading us down that dank, dark road of socialism that leads inevitably to the cliff.
Washington said no more than two
To which all did agree
Till FDR said oh pooh pooh
I think I’ll go for three
The GOP guy in that year
Had Wendell for first name
Which tells you all you need to hear
About his chance for fame
Well FDR had up his sleeve
A scheme to flip the donkeys
And then without a by your leave
Unite with Wendell’s flunkies
To make a Liberal party that
Would rule the land forever
And guarantee whoever sat
In White House left it never
The Liberal flag remained unfurled
The thought just died aborning
‘Cause Wendell Willkie left this world
To very little mourning